A Special Moment

The Christian calendar gives a preacher some great preaching Sundays.  Of course, at the top of the heap is Easter.  Any preacher who gives up the opportunity to preach on Easter Sunday should find other work.  Some of my other special preaching moments came on Baptism of the Lord Sunday.  I loved preaching on baptism and then standing back to watch people come for baptism who did not come to worship expecting to be baptized.  If there is a Sunday for watching the Spirit at work, it is surely this Sunday early in January.

 

Another very special preaching Sunday comes this Sunday as the church gathers on All Saints Sunday.  When I was preaching that Sunday, there was always a moment in the ritual for calling out the names of the remembered dead.  What a rich blessing it was to stand in a moment of such powerful remembrances.  It was also a Sunday when the visible community gathered around the Table with the invisible community of faithful witnesses for the holy meal hosted by the Lord.  An image which was ever before me on that Sunday was a long table.  On one end we gathered and on the other end just beyond the veil they gathered.  We were here and they were there. 

 

Gathered around such a Table on All Saints Day is what I came to understand as the communion of the saints.  Some of the saints are in heaven and some are here.  But, this particular Table gathering is one of those rare moments when the church has an opportunity to celebrate the One Community that is not separated by the veil of death.  I am grateful to the church for giving me a place to preach all these years and for the Christ who dared to call a most unqualified and inadequate boy to preach the gospel Sunday after Sunday after Sunday for a life time.